I don't suppose they could eat cake?

The Guardian reports:

The rising price of bread in France, symbolic of the high cost of living, is putting pressure on the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as he confronts growing dissatisfaction with shop prices.
The stick of crusty bread that symbolises French eating habits is the latest victim of the leap in international wheat prices which has hit Italian pasta-makers and US cereal firms. Priced at an average 75 to 95 cents (50-65p) in high-street bakeries, the baguette is forecast to rise 5 cents, a 5% to 7% jump. Consumers in France, where nine out of 10 people buy fresh bread daily and many eat baguette three times a day, are starting to protest.

Alternatively, there is the old standby of more circuses ...

What if?

For years, indeed for decades, we have been told that Scotland has an under-performing economy and that our economic growth rate lags behind that of the UK as a whole. Indeed, the new Scottish Executive (sorry, Scottish Government) has made it a central theme of its economic policy to seek to improve Scottish growth to bring it in line with that of the UK.

But what if it's not true? What if Scottish growth has not been lagging behind? What if, over the past ten years, the Scottish economy has been growing at a rate comparable with that of the UK (which as the Prime Minister keeps telling us is one of the best-performing economies in the G7)?

Such is the prospect offered by a new academic report by the Centre for Public Policy for Regions. To be fair, they do not go quite as far as I have suggested in the previous paragraph but there is a clear implication that the growth of the Scottish economy in recent years may have been under-estimated.

Alf Young in The Herald (here) and Hamish MacDonnell in The Scotsman (here) try to get to grips with the implications, not entirely successfully, I would suggest. It does, after all, take a bit of re-thinking to get to grips with the idea that Scotland may just have a successful economy on its hands.

Here's tae us, wha's like us? A bit premature, perhaps. It's only an academic report, after all.

Workers' playtime

I do not approve of this suggestion:

WORKERS should be given time to use social networking websites in their office, the TUC urged yesterday.
It said employers were within their rights to stop staff using sites such as Facebook during working hours, but believed a total ban would be an "over-reaction". Staff should instead be trusted to take time during their lunch break to use such sites.

If staff spend their lunchtimes on Facebook, when are they going to find the time to read blogs like this one?

City LibDem loses it

It's not just a lack of political sensitivity; it's the absence of any common sense. The Scotsman reports:

A COUNCIL leader sparked fury yesterday when she said was spearheading the return of ceremonial robes to set councillors "apart from the hoi polloi".
Jenny Dawe, the leader of Edinburgh city council, and George Grubb, the lord provost, have asked for a report on plans to restore the traditional red and black robes, and their accompanying tricorn hats.

What century does she think she's living in? Of course, I am just one of the said hoi polloi - so it may be presumptuous of me to criticise.

It was only a 37% increase

The fat cats once again. The Guardian CIF asks the questions and we provide the answers:

"But if executives want to function in British society in which their own companies play a great part, do they not care about social cohesion?"

No, they don't give a shit.

"Are they prepared to take all of the fruits of the booming economy, leaving only the dregs for everyone else?"

Yes and, if they could scoop up the dregs as well, you can be damn sure they would.

"When will our corporate leaders discover some shame?"

Shame is not a concept with which they have any familiarity, whatsoever.

I used to believe in Santa Claus

A mite suspicious, perhaps. See here:

Christine Ohuruogu, who only returned earlier this month from a one-year ban for missing three drug tests, became the first British woman to win a world championship track event for 14 years today, when she took gold in the 400m in Osaka.

Less than a month of competition leads to a gold medal? But hey, never mind, the BBC can once again get over-excited. And after all, as any fule kno, it's only other nationalities that are drug cheats...

Making it up as you go along

Merlin was not only a weegie but a Partick Thistle supporter. The Telegraph reports:

Merlin the magician - hirsute confidant of King Arthur and the architect of Camelot - was, in fact, Scottish, according to a new book.
Not only Scottish but, to be precise, hailing from Ardery Street, just off the Dumbarton Road, in the Partick area of Glasgow.
While the English, Welsh and even the French have laid claim to the wizard with the peaked hat for centuries, this is the first time that anyone has tried to shift Camelot north of the border.
But Adam Ardrey, amateur historian and one-time SNP candidate, claims that his six years of research prove that Merlin was actually born in the year 540 in the Lanarkshire town of Hamilton and moved to a house in what was then open countryside but, later, was to become the original home of Partick Thistle FC.

What next? Joan of Arc lived in Nairn and supported Forres Mechanics, while Julius Caesar had a flat in Fountainbridge and was a diehard jambo?

Wishful thinking

Does a political resignation ever happen in a way which is "entirely voluntary"? It seems difficult to believe it of Alberto Gonzales. Gerard Baker in The Times is obviously someone whose glass is perennially half-full:

Perhaps the biggest surprise behind the resignation yesterday was that it seems to have been entirely voluntary.
Unlike the removal of Donald Rumsfeld as Defence Secretary last year – a decision made by Mr Bush in the teeth of growing domestic political fury over the Iraq war – Mr Gonzales was not forced from office.
In a somewhat testy statement yesterday Mr Bush said that he had accepted the resignation “reluctantly” and loudly bemoaned the fact that Mr Gonzales’s name had been “dragged through the mud for political reasons”. Other reports said Mr Bush had only “grudgingly” agreed to it when Mr Gonzales offered it last Friday.
It seems that the Attorney-General had finally decided after a summer break from the maelstrom of Washington that he could simply no longer tolerate the heat and opprobrium he generated.
Though Mr Bush may be disappointed, other Republicans are likely to be much happier. There is little more than a year to go in the Bush Administration, but there are still important political-judicial decisions in the Attorney-General’s in-tray.
Being able to confront these issues with fresh blood, someone not tainted by the US attorneys issue, will give the Administration and its Republican allies a much better chance of achieving their objectives.

"Achieving their objectives"? Sure, sure, whatever. Dream on, pal.

On newspaper websites (or biting the hand that feeds me)

Not for the first time, The Sunday Herald's website this morning is something of a disaster area. By the time this post is published, they may have rectified the position, but at present none of the articles appears to be accessible. This is rather more serious than their usual habit of running words together, so as to make certain articles unreadable. I do sometimes wonder why they bother with a website - admittedly it is available for free - but what do their advertisers think? And why does not the editor or proprietor phone up his technical people and demand that they get it sorted? OK, it's Sunday but even so. The answer is probably that no-one at The Sunday Herald gives a toss about their website, surely an attitude that is commercially short-sighted.

Not that other newspaper websites are significantly better. The (daily) Herald is clearly worried that it does not have enough daily content - so it continues to list articles that are days old, without dating them on the summary pages. And it must be one of the most primitive websites around in terms of design. It is worth checking out their so-called political blogs - apparently, updating once in a blue moon is sufficient. (As of yesterday, the most recent posting on one of the blogs was 18 July. Again, why bother if you do not take it seriously?)

Meanwhile, The Scotsman continues to pursue its policy of hiding its opinion pages behind a firewall requiring payment. Does it think that this will enhance its influence over the opinion formers? Who cares what Peter McMahon or Hamish Whatever writes if it cannot be linked to? Once again, why run a website if you want to hide away the 'good' bits? I can't believe it makes much money. But at least the website is technically competent and usually functional.

The Guardian claims to have one of the best and most-read websites in the newspaper world. And I used to think that it was indeed one of the best and easiest to use. But that was until they introduced their new introductory page. Anyone using dial-up (as I am forced to do occasionally) will recognise that the page is so overfilled with photographs and links that it takes far too long to load. It is as if you were covering up a set of efficient and competent knickers with a flashy and incompetent fur coat whose buttons are deliberately designed to make life difficult. (And, as someone who makes regular use of its tv schedules, this nonsense that they are updated daily at 5.25am, when they are frequently not updated until 8am, is irritating - and, if they are prepared to list the Sky Sports schedules, why not Setanta?) Thankfully, The Observer retains the old Guardian format, which in my eyes makes it the best newspaper website available. Shame about its content, which seems to have gone irretrievably downhill since its conversion to tabloid format.

Since its re-design, The Times website has become clunky in the extreme, while its Sunday counterpart continues to refuse to publish its Ecosse section. And what happened to the Scottish version of the daily newspaper that we were promised earlier in the year?

The Independent website is fairly primitive, like The Herald. Also like The Herald, it lists articles from previous days, but at least it has the grace to date them properly. Curiously, it divides its columnists into two sections according to their place in the alphabet - what's that all about then?

The Telegraph has a reasonably competent website but it relies for its Scottish news on that maddo Cochrane whose reports increasingly seem to come from a foreign country.

The tabloids are beneath contempt.

The one good thing is that they are all free. Why buy a newspaper?

Quote of the day

By Alex Neil in The Sunday Times on the alleged denigration (here) of fiscal autonomy by Wendy's hubbie:

Alex Neil, the nationalist MSP, said: “It must be be the first time in history there’s been a marital row over fiscal autonomy.”

Nice quote but I'm far from sure that the story stands up.

Failing to organise booze-ups in breweries

There are those who think that an ID cards system might be worthwhile. Unfortunately, it would be run by the famously 'not fit for purpose' Home Office. Further evidence of that benighted department's incompetence is revealed by The Independent:

Over 500,000 names on the DNA database are false, misspelt or incorrect, the Government has admitted.
Ministers have disclosed that one in seven of the genetic profiles on the controversial database is a "replicate", raising alarming questions about the integrity and accuracy of the entire system.
Around 4 million names are on the database, which is the biggest in the world, and holds details of rapists, murderers, and suspects arrested but not charged.
Thousands asked to give their details to police upon arrest have given false names or alternative spellings of their names. In other cases, mistakes have been made in the spelling of names. Some files include names belonging to someone else, or names of people who do not exist. Altogether there are 550,000 "replica" files.

If the Home Office cannot run a database of 4 million entries, how will it cope with a database of nearer 60 million entries?

Look who's talking

Are we all idiots? Someone called Kayt (sic) Turner writes in Scotland on Sunday:

WE ARE a stupid nation. We are raising a generation of idiots - and what's worse, we see nothing wrong with it. In fact, we celebrate stupidity to such an extent that Homer Simpson is venerated as a cultural icon and included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Not that most of Homer's acolytes will have any idea what that is.
One of the dumbest oxygen thieves ever is about to win Big Brother (itself a glorious celebration of the thick in our society). Don't get me wrong, Brian is obviously a sweet, genuine and innocent boy, all qualities that should rightly be celebrated. But he's as thick as pig shit. The twins, Sam and Amanda (dumb and dumber) are equally lovely - and equally stupid. We may laugh ourselves silly at the fact that they think an egg is a vegetable, but that's all they know. And they are completely unencumbered by shame at their lack of knowledge. Of course, the idiots will, more than likely, do very, very well when they leave the house. Jade Goody - surely the biggest eejit of all time - earned millions.
Look around you - nothing but idiots.

Er, speak for yourself. But someone who has obviously taken the trouble to become conversant with the goings-on in Big Brother may not be the most appropriate person to complain about the general standard of intelligence.

Especially when that someone cannot even spell their own first name ...

Irritating

Davina McCall standing in for Ken Bruce on Radio 2. Is she an intelligent woman pretending to be stupid or is she just stupid? Either way, it's irritating. Almost as irritating as Jeremy Vine's desperately contrived stirring of so-called human interest stories appearing in that day's tabloids. And now that Sarah has been cast into the outer darkness, there's only Wogan to justify switching on the radio - and, as we all know, he's a Xylon from the planet Tharg ...

Sorry, it's been a slow news day.

It's not kinder und kuche any more

The Guardian reports:

Gordon Brown and his German counterpart, Angela Merkel, met in Downing Street yesterday, ostensibly to discuss ways to improve healthcare in poorer countries and other essential EU business. But the real purpose of the chancellor's visit, perhaps, came later in the day when the two leaders went to watch England play Germany in a football friendly at the new Wembley stadium.
Mr Brown and Mrs Merkel have much in common: they are like-minded politicians with no-nonsense leadership styles, and are known to get on well. More relevant to last night's outing may be that they both succeeded far more flamboyant leaders - Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder - and could do with a little lightening up on the image front.

And both of them could support the winning team!

Educashun, educashun, educashun

The question nobody seems to ask - what do we get for all this extra spending? Are Scottish children better able to read or do sums or pass exams? The BBC website reports:

Each school pupil in Scotland receives hundreds of pounds more in education funding than those in England, figures for 2005/06 have revealed.
Almost 12% more was spent on primary school pupils north of the border compared with those in England.
At secondary level, the rate of spending was 24% higher in Scotland.
The Scottish Executive warned against making direct comparisons between the two countries and said the different systems of education played a part.
An average of £4,318 was spent on primary pupils in 2005/06 in Scotland, compared with £3,684 south of the border.
For secondary pupils local authorities spent an average of £5,771, in contrast to £4,638 for England.

Doing comparisons is difficult, I accept, especially when the major comparator has exam systems like this, also described by the BBC:

GCSE grades have improved again, with more top grades being achieved in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
There was a tiny fall in the overall pass rate - entries marked from A* to G. It fell from 98.1% to 98%. The total number of entries rose a little to just over 5.8m.

Imagine that: a pass rate of 98%. Must be quite difficult to fail.

A good start?

Oh aye, those policy themes that Ms Alexander preaches?

• a competitive yet compassionate economy

Well, no-one would advocate an uncompetitive economy, would they? And I don't hear many calls for a return to unbridled, ruthless, tooth and claw capitalism. It's a balancing act, of course, but where would Wendy place the fulcrum?

• consumer not producer focused public services

You don't run a health service for the benefit of nurses or an education service for the benefit of teachers, although with Scottish Labour in the past I sometimes wondered. Even so, it is not exactly revolutionary to suggest that public services should benefit the public.

• empowering people and communities, not institutions

You mean, like denying the people the ability to vote in a referendum?

• developing Scottish solutions for Scottish aspirations

Well, we wouldn't want English (or Polish, or Belgian) solutions, would we? And, actually, can you have a solution to an aspiration? You may solve a problem but solving an aspiration may be a bit more tricky.

Look, I know that politicians have to say something from time to time and, if it has to be anodyne platitudes, we can live with it. But memo to the politician whose brain is supposed to be the size of a planet - must do better next time.

Why does McLetchie hate pensioners?

A needless reform. The Scotsman reports:

THE ban on pensioners carrying out jury service in Scotland should be lifted, a senior MSP yesterday said.
More than 200,000 Scots could be recruited if the age limit for jury service was raised above 65, according to former Tory leader David McLetchie, himself a lawyer.
At the moment, anyone above the age of 65 is excluded from sitting on a jury, but the Edinburgh Pentlands MSP said this fails to recognise older peoples' expertise and experience of life.

Pensioners have far better things to do than sitting on juries.

Quote of the day

From The Independent (here). On being accused of selling steaks of zebu meat, an animal somewhat remotely related to a cow:

JD Wetherspoons said it sold 140,000 steaks a week. It added: "Zebu is ... taxonomically identical to any other breed of cattle such as Charolais, Limosin [sic] or Hereford."

Oh well, that's all right then ...

Buggins' turn

There is something wrong with the Labour Party. Gordon Brown became leader unopposed. Now Wendy Alexander is doing the same for the leadership of the party in Holyrood. This is reminiscent of the magic circle that dictated the leadership of the Conservative Party in the 1960s.

There is no point in having an electoral college if there is no choice on offer. If the leadership of the so-called people's party is determined by the ruling clique without any vestige of democratic challenge, then we're up the creek without a paddle.

This Scotland

Edinburgh: the only city in the world where armed robbers make their getaway by bus. The Evening News reports:

AN armed robber stole a "substantial" amount of cash from a New Town newsagents after threatening the shop assistant with a knife.
The raider, who was wearing a balaclava, carried out the robbery at Canonmills Newsagents, before making his escape on a bus.
The terrified female shop assistant handed over a three-figure sum, which police officers described as a "substantial amount of cash".
The man, believed to be aged between 20 and 25, then fled the Howard Street shop, removed his mask and ran into Warriston Crescent.
He was then spotted standing at a bus stop next to the Standard Life building at the west side of Tanfield.
It is believed he got on to a bus heading towards the north of the city.

And, no, I don't know why The Evening News believes that each sentence deserves to be a paragraph.